“CLICK IT UP A NOTCH” is the name of the blog that I found for this project. This blog focuses on good tips and styles for one’s photography. The creator of this site is Courtney Slazinik, a photographer who loves sharing her work with the world. Courtney loves taking photos of her children and her daily life, but she also loves helping others fully understand their DSLR’s.

In the blog, there are many different topic options one can choose. From lighting, to senior photos, she teaches a little bit of everything. The reason I chose this blog is because I to have a passion for photography and I will take any chance to learn something new when I can.

When first opening the blog, viewers will notice how nicely organized the website is set up. The simplicity and cleanness of the design really makes it easy for users to find their way around the blog. I strongly believe this is a professionally made site because of the content that is displayed to the user. For example, not only does she help people with the camera side of thing’s, but she also gives a large amount of help with Lightroom editing. She teaches how to correct skin color and lighting and many more things that amateur  photographers might not know as well as others.

I’m constantly reading all her work and I would love to share her skills with anyone looking for more. If you want to check what she’s all about, all you have to do is go to this link. https://clickitupanotch.com/blog

Part of getting invested in any field is finding resources to help you gain more knowledge of the subject. I decided to spend some time looking for just such a place. After a little looking I found a ton of sites and blogs specifically designed to teach and inspire, but none were nearly as neat as the site Film Courage – http://filmcourage.com/blog/– I love how much info there is about filmmaking in here: Everything from screenwriting tips, to lighting setups, all the way to acting. There’s so much here, and a lot of it is in video form with timestamps directing you to exactly what you’re looking for. It’s well designed too; I never have the sense that I can’t find what I’d like to see. Film Courage definitely wanted to have a clean design, and I believe they succeeded.

Watching through the various videos and browsing the text content, I believe there is a ton of useful information. There are interviews from actual filmmakers, scriptwriters, cinematographers, and more! The best way to gain knowledge is to learn from masters in their field, and Film Courage is chalk full of them. My favorite thing about the internet is that you can reach and listen to anyone now days, but the trouble can be finding the most qualified people. Film Courage makes it incredibly easy to find people who know what they’re talking about, so all you have to do is watch and listen.

Such as this article here – http://filmcourage.com/2018/09/04/staying-in-the-game-surviving-as-a-working-screenwriter-in-hollywood-a-night-with-mark-sanderson/– Which is not only a long article but you can actually watch a 2 hour speaking series about this guy, Mark Sanders, and his journey through becoming a successful screenwriter. This is not something I would have probably seen organically but it’s so interesting, I’m glad it’s on this site. http://filmcourage.com/2018/02/08/writing-web-series-getting-something-nathan-alan-bunker/– This article is a Q&A with a man who wrote a web series and interviews him about how he went about it. Which is another valuable article I probably wouldn’t have seen if I didn’t have this website. I will for sure be following this blog from now on, and I hope it has something for you as well!

The blog I decided to write about is called Art of VFX.

This blog is all about the special video effects (VFX) implemented in movies and tv shows. I think this is really cool because VFX combines computer animation with live-action recording to fabricate truly unique and lifelike experiences for the audience to watch! Some of the coolest stuff this blog has to offer are interviews with VFX artists, as well as behind-the-scenes VFX breakdowns to show how these effects were created. For example, there’s a neat video showing all the layers of filters and animations that were used to create the effects in the latest Jurassic World movie. The end result looks nothing like the initial raw camera footage! Having behind-the-scenes breakdowns can be useful for getting inspiration to create one’s one VFX! As far as presentation, the blog site is pretty good. There’s a home page with the latest posts, and it’s easy to find the different categories. The content, however, is okay. The VFX breakdowns are usually brief videos that only skim the surface of the work done, but it still is nice to have them all compiled into one website for casual browsing. The interviews, on the other hand, are very in-depth, and sometimes the complement the videos. For example, one of the interviews is on José Manuel Weil who was the VFX Supervisor for the same Jurassic World movie mentioned earlier. I highly recommend anyone who is interested in this kind of thing to check out this blog and get some inspiration!

Because of my interest in animation, I decided to search the interwebs for a blog about it, and I stumbled upon this little treasure. https://www.awn.com/blog

Animation World Network is a blog that has everything you would want to know about Animation. With some perusing I found it has news about whats going on in the animation world today, as well as articles from different animation sources. From Disney, Pixar, technology of animation, everything. It has links to other animation blogs that you can get easy access to, as well as shows, events, and even has job listings from people out there in the industry. LOTS of helpful things for students who want to immerse themselves in this industry.

I found the site very easy to navigate. It has a nifty home bar that spits everything into categories that you can see, and well as a hover menu (like shown in the above picture) that has even more info. I read of few articles that they had posted, and found them captivating and interesting enough. They have a comment section at the end of each of them that allows people to engage with each other and share ideas/thoughts which is neat!  What I found that was really cool and awesome was the Jobs link, that takes you to job listings of people out there in the industry and what they’re looking for.

I think the site is overall produced very nicely and professionally. It’s easy to use and is a great resource to keep up with the animation industry and to see what hot new things are happening within it, as well as finding out what future employers are looking for.

By, MaKayla

https://www.richardbernabe.com/achieving-photographic-balance/

1. tell us why you choose this site and why others would also find it interesting

2. provide an example of at least one good resource from the site

3. tell us how well you think the site is produced

4. write about the quality of information from this professional blog

5. make sure to support any statements you make with examples

I found this site immediately interesting because of the aesthetic as well as the amount of articles avaliable. Theres a lot of media to consume that catches the eye. The site also has a plethora of resources for illustrators, online classes, books, and podcasts, to use or simply look into. I think even if a viewer isn’t a illustrator, people who are interested in art and comics would find it enjoyable.

Amongst it’s many resources I looked into the Freelance Folder to help educate myself on becoming a Freelance artist in my free time.

http://freelancefolder.com/

Interestingly enough the site is also produced by WordPress, although it has it’s own personal domain. The about page mentions the creator of Illustration Age, Thomas James, but no other team members, although considering the amount of media, as well as their other social media, I’m sure he has a larger team behind him.

As far as quality, while the art featured is phenomenal, majority of it’s posts are collections of illustrations with little to no text to context them.

https://illustrationage.com/2018/09/28/dramatically-dark-paintings-by-piotr-jablonski/

The last link has absolutely no text involved, other then a link to the authors website. While text isn’t necessarily required to look at art, for a blog it does seem strange.

The text is minimal and kept short, even in text heavy posts, like the Q&A with comic artist Aminder Dhaliwal, https://illustrationage.com/2018/10/08/comics-qa-with-aminder-dhaliwal/

I personally would have liked to see more text, contextualizing the art, introducing the artist better, or possibly even analyzing the featured artwork to act as a example artwork for newer illustrators to strive toward.

The name of the Blog I chose to write about is “Woodsy Studio,”

http://woodsy-studio.com/.

This website is home for the Visual Novel Developing studio, “Woodsy Studios.” A visual novel is a video game that is more focused on the art of storytelling than game play; there is some agreement however, when it comes to categorizing a visual novel as a video game because of it’s lack of game play. As a person that has always loved anime, video games, storytelling and illustrating, I find Visual Novels very appealing, and would like to challenge myself by creating one, on my own one day.

I find this blog very useful and interesting since it talks about the process of making a visual novel, updates of progress on their projects, links to their “patreon” and recently, some job opportunities in the voice acting department.

I think this website can serve as an example of what a professional Visual Novel Developer blog, should look like. I also believe that because of their concise and frequent updates, it shows us a glimpse of what the process of making a visual novel is, and how to look for help or talent for your project, since they seem to be open to looking for personnel outside their production circle.

A really cool, and unique feature this website has, is a quiz that you can take that can match you to one of their visual novels, that you might enjoy due to your interests and other factors. This is the first time I’ve seen anything like this, and found it to be very clever when it comes to capturing the attention of a potential customer or client.

I believe this website is of very high quality, the home page is interesting and eye catching, it’s very easy to navigate and clearly organized. If you’re interested in illustrating, storytelling video games, and production of a project such as this one, I highly recommend checking out this blog and doing some more research on visual novels.

-by Monica B